all at sea

Saying goodbye to Pam after such a long stay is not so easy, and neither is riding down the hill fully-loaded.  Pam takes our panniers down into the village for us.  It's a beautiful sunny day and the long straight road to Ortaca goes as quickly as our thoughts.  Back on the bike, looking back to our stay, thinking about the places ahead.  We try to avoid the main highway and take a road, probably the old road, around a hill towards Koyeciz.  Eventually we have to get onto the highway but the traffic is light and we decide to stay on it.  We have two days to reach Marmaris and opt for an early finish mid-afternoon when we reach about halfway.  The reason is a nice empty stretch of road.  The countryside away from the coastline has been some of the best we've had in Turkey and here is a pine forest and a dry river bed replanted with young pines.  Gayle scouts out a delightful place over the river for the night.  A full moon rises even before the sun sets.  It is idyllic.

idyllic: extremely happy, peaceful or picturesque

 

Riding on the next day we can take a little detour around the foot of more hills and through some small villages.  We emerge from our back road at a pretty and well-preserved old Ottoman-era village with some lovely stone houses.  It's a little touristy but on the discreet side.  It's so rare to find such villages these days.  After lunch it's an uphill slog to a pass followed by what seems like an endless descent.  We're following a river but it appears to be flowing in the opposite direction which means that we have to climb again to reach the pass with a view of the sea and the sprawl of Marmaris below. We coast down to the port to buy our ferry tickets for the next morning and take a cheap hotel near the seafront.  The promenade is quiet - just a few foreign and some national tourists wandering around.   

looking for a spot to eat our spit-roast chicken and bread

anyone there?

The boat that crosses to Rhodes is not so big - and starts to fill up when a tour party arrives.  Our bikes stand in an aisle next to another - there's a Polish cyclist as well.  The crossing takes a couple of hours and is plain sailing.  We arrive at the port with the Old Town walls protecting the harbour.  Our plan is a little loose - we want to visit Symi but don't know when the ferry runs.  After a fruitful visit to the local tourist information office we learn that a ferry is going in the evening.  We book a place to stay on the island for two nights and then go for a look around the Old Town.  It's a museum.  "The best-preserved medieval town in Europe."  It's not so well-preserved in some places and it's almost deserted.  It looks like everything here is only for tourism and, as it's winter, it's understandably dead.  Really dead.  It's eerie and disappointing.  Empty cities are not very interesting.

Symi, on the other hand, is everything that we want and more.  The main town of Gialos is a colourful mix of grand mansions built by wealthy sea captains and sponge merchants.  The houses are perched on the steep hillsides reaching around and down to the harbour.  As quiet as you'd expect - there are only a handful of cafes and tavernas on the harbour front that are open.  Most of the big houses are now holiday homes.  

Gayle reads about the Horio - apparently every Greek island has a Horio (insert your own joke here) - the village up on the ridgetop overlooked by a ruined castle and a pristine white church.  There's a wide staircase that leads up to the oldest inhabited part of the island - tucked away up here to hide from bothersome pirates.  Up at the church we get the views - looking over the port in one direction, out to the Turkish mainland, back towards the ridge over which the road disappears and then down over the Horio and a lush green valley of farmland.  Walking around the village up here we realise this is where most of the locals are living - the houses are smaller and the schools are here.

We walk out along the ridge northwards beyond the old windmills and along a rough and rugged path through the limestone rocks.  The walk is waymarked but we sometimes lose sight of the red paint markers.  After a much longer walk than we expected we emerge at a tiny beach facing a small island with a chapel.  The beach is tiny because some moron has built a concrete and fenced cafe up to the sea.  We both have a refreshing dip in the cold water.  There's a shorter walk to another bay but again, there's no real beach to speak of.  The best places are accessed by boat.  Still, we enjoy the walks in the sunshine.  Around and about there are signs of people getting ready for the new season - lots of construction, clearing, painting etc.  


The ferry calls in on a round trip from Rhodes some days and brings some daytrippers and deliveries and it's this boat that we take to Kos.  The weather is changing and there was some doubt if the boat would run.  It rocks out in the Turkish coastal waters for a while and I wish we were on one of the bigger ferries.  Kos is just a staging post for onward travel but as a storm is coming we opt for a cheap room in a hotel.  The town is thankfully very quiet, although it turns out that we have a room above one of the rockest places in town, when the band kicks off with a crooner singing old Greek romantic songs that could just as easily be Turkish.  He's a performer, I can tell you, starting at around 8.30 he's still going when the storm blows in and the thunder and lightning threaten to drown him out.  The first power cut we realise is because of the storm.  The silence and darkness deafening.  And then power is resumed and so is the show.  I have to check our bathroom though because it sounds like the guy is in our shower.  And on he goes.  Through the second and third power cuts - these, we suspect, induced by other hotel guests who decide that around midnight enough is enough.  But the show must go on. And on it does until 2am.  Well, they say Kos Town has a good nightlife.